Tag: funny ghost movie

A tribute to the original. Funny at times but falls flat big time. Anything about Ghostbusters and it takes us back in time. The Ivan Reitman project was hands down colossal. You watch it even in this era and it still manages to leave its impression on you. Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters comes nowhere close to bringing that old anxious charm of the original. It is funny alright, but there is nothing that could bring it close let alone surpass the levels of Reitman’s work.

DIRECTION AND PLOT OF GHOSTBUSTERS

Ghostbusters skims on the surface of the original, so there is nothing extraordinary that the movie has to offer, except for glimpses, characters and ghosts from the past that fill you up with nostalgia. There are plenty of elements from the 1984 gang strewn all across the movie. You might go, “Ah! There he is!” or “Oooh! Oooh! That’s from the old one!”

Clinging to the original fun theme of the movie, that neither goes too dark or stays too aloof from it, Ghostbusters manages to walk well on what it was proposed to canter on. However, there isn’t an element of surprise lurking anywhere here. The world Paul Feig creates is unaffected by ghosts, the multitude of dumbness, who stay unfazed by the lives of any ghostbuster, unaware of what’s going on. They seem to come in as they please, react when it seems fit to them.

Feig’s direction goes to awkward enclaves when he constantly keeps chopping off frames quickly moving on from one scene to another without caring enough for the audience to take it in. You can witness the shoddy editing go strangely awry at so many points that it creates a portal of disconnect.

GOOD BITS TO CHERISH

Chris Hemsworth as Kevin is probably the funniest thing in Ghostbusters. The only notable and memorable element that you might want to talk about in the long run, owing to the levels of dumbness he is shown scaling. Kristen Wiig’s Erin Gilbert has an instant apparent crush on him and she aces it with her superb comic timing.

Kate McKinnon builds up a strange character Jillian Holtzmann which is oddly satisfying. She does most of the work for the team. She has this eccentric cool style that will make you love her instantly.

CAMEOS AND GLIMPSES FROM THE PAST (SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY DU-UH!)

There are plenty of cameos to watch out for. First of all, all those major characters from the 1984 movie pop up every now and then at odd hours namely: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. Not to forget Annie Potts who reprises her role as the desk receptionist here as well. Ozzy Osbourne shows up at one point too which was a pleasant surprise. Slimer the green ghost gets to drive the Ecto 1. It was good to see him revived after so long.

The ugly part of it all was that their inclusion seemed oddly forced. There was no subtlety to it. No jokes flew when they were there and that makes it look utterly fabricated. Camera zooms in at a lot of places to deliberately show a past reference. Easter Eggs are like lying in front of the camera for 2 minutes for you to notice.

FINAL VERDICT

If you divide the movie in subsections, you will realize that the movie does fairly well in the first half. In the later half Ghostbusters’ humour simply drops dead. If you focus on how it manages to bring back every character from the past, you will have nothing less than goosebumps on your body. Humour comes naturally with the inclusion of Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig. But if you look at it as a complete movie, sadly it fails to dilate your eyes.